Beware Amazon and Ebay Pricing Too Good to be True

[Bobby_M]

Everyone wants a deal right? Of course.

I want to bring your attention to a scam being perpetrated in increasing frequency lately. I'll explain it with three players involved. 1. The Scammer 2. The Mark and 3. The Loser

Scammer creates a sales channel on Amazon or Ebay. In some cases it's actually a hacked account of someone who had been active and in good standing at some time in the past so feedback scores appear great. Scammer lists a popular item for about 30-50% off retail.

The Mark finds it and scoops it up feeling like a champion for getting such a great deal. Paypal payment is made.

The scammer places an order with the Loser (a legitimate vendor that stocks the items in question) using a stolen credit card number and specifies the Mark's address for delivery.

Loser ships to the Mark and everyone is happy for a bit.

Stolen credit card victim notices, calls their bank and the bank initiates chargebacks to all vendors involved. The Loser is out the merchandise as well as a hefty chargeback fee.

It can go one of two ways at this point. The first would be that the Loser already accepts a certain amount of loss every year and they move on trying a little harder not to be scammed again. The second would be filing a police report in the Mark's town. See, the Mark doesn't know any of this happened. They paid for and received goods. However, they are actually stolen merchandise so it is now up to the Mark to make a claim with Paypal or their own bank to initiate a dispute to recover the money for the Loser, who is the rightful recipient of the payment.

It's quite a perfect scam actually because the middleman nature offers a layer of protection. If you can believe it, eBay will not even take a report of an item being stolen merchandise unless it comes from law enforcement directly. Even if eBay does take the auction down, the scammer just moves on with another hacked account.

Long story short, stop being Marks. If the price is too good, it's too good. Look at the feedback rating. Was the last positive from more than a year ago? Was the feedback for baby clothes and then all of a sudden they have 10 grainfathers for half of retail?

 

[Brewenstein]

Thanks for the info Bobby. I don't shop eBay for much, but I will take your information into to consideration when I do.

Also, this would be good information to post in some of the other areas of the forum as well IMO.

 

[BigFloppy]

I HOPE this wasn't an issue you got dragged into (and if you did... that you nipped it in the bud and didn't ship multiple Grainfathers)

HUGE KUDOS also needs to go to you Bobby for not going truly "head to head" with another sponsor on here where your price is obviously less expensive than the other sponsor that is trying to push their wares (yes, TAGLINES DO WORK... I ordered mine today!!!)

 

[Bobby_M]

Thanks for your concern. I got hosed for 3 chugger pumps, which I'm still trying to track down and I almost lost a grainfather. We actually did ship it but lucked out that it first went to an international freight forwarding service where it sat just long enough for a chargeback to come through. Thanks to a very vigilant credit card owner who saw it immediately, we stopped it from leaving the country and only had to pay the shipping to get it back.

 

[Bensiff]

Credit card companies are getting better at shutting down suspect transactions. Frustrating for sure. I almost had a cell phone stolen from me due to a scammer working Ebay. Scammer used bad credit card and had the intent to steal the phone out of the mailbox when it arrived at the house the stolen credit card belonged to. Fortunately for me I sent it delivery signature required and the home owner was a good honest person, recognized what happened, and sent it back to me. Ebay and Paypals' policies seem to be in favor of the "customer" much more so than protecting their sellers, so I have stopped selling on Ebay.

Thanks for sharing the scam, good luck on getting your money/product back.

 

[CA_Mouse]

Thanks for your concern. I got hosed for 3 chugger pumps, which I'm still trying to track down and I almost lost a grainfather. We actually did ship it but lucked out that it first went to an international freight forwarding service where it sat just long enough for a chargeback to come through. Thanks to a very vigilant credit card owner who saw it immediately, we stopped it from leaving the country and only had to pay the shipping to get it back.

That absolutely bites, Bobby! You are one of the more respectable dealers on here and I have always been happy to deal with you on my needs. I hope that you are able to track down the scumbuckets for those Chuggers!:cross:

 

[augiedoggy]

Everyone wants a deal right? Of course.

I want to bring your attention to a scam being perpetrated in increasing frequency lately. I'll explain it with three players involved. 1. The Scammer 2. The Mark and 3. The Loser

Scammer creates a sales channel on Amazon or Ebay. In some cases it's actually a hacked account of someone who had been active and in good standing at some time in the past so feedback scores appear great. Scammer lists a popular item for about 30-50% off retail.

The Mark finds it and scoops it up feeling like a champion for getting such a great deal. Paypal payment is made.

The scammer places an order with the Loser (a legitimate vendor that stocks the items in question) using a stolen credit card number and specifies the Mark's address for delivery.

Loser ships to the Mark and everyone is happy for a bit.

Stolen credit card victim notices, calls their bank and the bank initiates chargebacks to all vendors involved. The Loser is out the merchandise as well as a hefty chargeback fee.

It can go one of two ways at this point. The first would be that the Loser already accepts a certain amount of loss every year and they move on trying a little harder not to be scammed again. The second would be filing a police report in the Mark's town. See, the Mark doesn't know any of this happened. They paid for and received goods. However, they are actually stolen merchandise so it is now up to the Mark to make a claim with Paypal or their own bank to initiate a dispute to recover the money for the Loser, who is the rightful recipient of the payment.

It's quite a perfect scam actually because the middleman nature offers a layer of protection. If you can believe it, eBay will not even take a report of an item being stolen merchandise unless it comes from law enforcement directly. Even if eBay does take the auction down, the scammer just moves on with another hacked account.

Long story short, stop being Marks. If the price is too good, it's too good. Look at the feedback rating. Was the last positive from more than a year ago? Was the feedback for baby clothes and then all of a sudden they have 10 grainfathers for half of retail?

This is good to know and the part about looking at the seller info is a very good point. But sometimes the deals end up being that good too... I did buy a 12.5gallon stainless conical new for $300 including shipping there afterall...

This reminds me of the craiglist scammers with the western union scams which are all over craiglist and it seems theres no one who cares to do anything about them. (as well as the fake calls from "microsoft support"...

 

[Bobby_M]

I'm certainly not opposed to anyone shopping for deals but my message is more about understanding the vendor you're buying from. Many people are almost in a competition of "see how cheap you can get this stuff for" and it's inevitable that some of those amazing deals are in fact too good to be true. Of course the onus of picking a good vendor is on the person pulling their credit card out but if you post links to cheap sales, there can be an unspoken vouching going on that the link clicker assumes and that the link poster didn't plan.

Everyone loses when fraud starts running rampant. We have to spend more money preventing dealing with it and it makes keeping prices low that much harder.

 

[ACbrewer]

Everyone loses when fraud starts running rampant. We have to spend more money preventing dealing with it and it makes keeping prices low that much harder.

Not just that, but if the fraud is to aggregious, people stop trusting, and stop buying or selling and then everything falls further apart.

 

[Bensiff]

Everyone loses when fraud starts running rampant. We have to spend more money preventing dealing with it and it makes keeping prices low that much harder.

I Wish people would embrace that thought. Sadly, many people are happy to be crooked if they can reasonably not get caught, same way so many are happy to be internet trolls.

 

[normonster]

I stopped using ebay years ago when people were sending me copies of movies instead of originals. These days I just bite the bullet and buy everything new and of high quality so if it comes time to sell I can get something back.

F%$#@ scammers.

 

[malhal]

Yep I saw this scam on Amazon last week. Many high value items 50% off by a seller with not many reviews and all items were 4 in stock. Unfortunately I saw some items change to 3 in stock so someone definitely got scammed. The seller was removed but came back again a few minutes later under a different merchant ID: A31XOAJ8ASJCWV but same username: _new-product4_ I found it very hard to report it to Amazon, there was no obvious way to contact them about a seller all their fraud reporting is about a product, also on Twitter they weren't interested.

 

[ACbrewer]

I Wish people would embrace that thought. Sadly, many people are happy to be crooked if they can reasonably not get caught, same way so many are happy to be internet trolls.

look up "tragedy of the commons" which if not this, is closely related. Basically when nobody owns something (commons, fishing areas, etc) Everybody abuses it and takes what he can, and the area is soon despoiled and useless for the common use it had before.

 

[Bensiff]

look up "tragedy of the commons" which if not this, is closely related. Basically when nobody owns something (commons, fishing areas, etc) Everybody abuses it and takes what he can, and the area is soon despoiled and useless for the common use it had before.

Yup yup...but, I'll kill that there or else it will take this into politics and get this moved into the debate thread.

 

[MidAtlanticBrew]

Good message. ... I take the approach of looking at overall value when I shop for my hobbies. I like to buy from vendors that offer the best overall value and price is just one piece of value. To me value includes comprehesive offerings (for one stop shopping), great descriptions, good return policy, customer service, fast ship times, a few unique product offerings, freshness on consumables, vendors who give back to the hobby, and consistently reasonable day to day pricing. I really dislike the sites that constantly offer 20% sales to offset prices that are generally 20% higher. I'm not suggestion OP isn't one of those, but some of the midwest based sites seem to be.

 

[akthor]

As someone who has really brought a lot to this hobby and helped a lot of people it bums me out and pisses me off you had this happen. I will keep your advice in mind and I hope the right people will get punished.